Takoma Park City Manager Jamal Fox has wasted more than $33,000 in city taxpayer funds on legal fees to fight a city employee’s request for six days of telework, which would have cost nothing. That’s according to AFSCME 3399, which has won an arbitration on the case. “We're trying to prevent abuses of power like this in the future,” Local 3399 president Brendan Smith told Union City. “This arbitration was a huge waste of city taxpayer dollars, and the Takoma Park City Council should take action to prevent these abuses in the future,” Smith added. “This needless arbitration also consumed a large amount of staff time and impacted our small union budget, but we weren’t going to stand by and let this injustice go unanswered.” Former AFSCME Local 3399 President Sean Hendley, who is a City gardener, and AFSCME Council 67 staff representative Victor Rieman represented the employee in the arbitration; though neither are attorneys, they won the case facing the City’s high-paid lawyer. Since Fox began work as city manager last August, he has denied every grievance filed by an AFSCME union member. Read more here, including how to take action if you’re a TP resident. Last Friday, over 40 workers from Maximus, the nation’s largest federal call center contractor, marched to the company's brand new, state-of-the-art headquarters in Tysons, Va., to deliver a petition with close to twelve thousand signatures calling for livable wages and affordable health care. The workers, who traveled from call centers in Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia, and Texas and are organizing with CWA, are also fighting to protect their right to organize a union free from intimidation. Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and CWA Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens joined the protest in solidarity with the workers. The Maximus workers also participated in the Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington on Saturday. Their collective actions come on the heels of a two-day strike at two of Maximus’ largest call centers located in Louisiana and Mississippi last month. Watch the live stream of the protest here. Workers at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington (PIW), members of CWA Local 2336, held an informational picket in front of the hospital on Monday demanding a fair contract that addresses dangerous working conditions including staffing shortages, inadequate resources, and lack of sufficient security. CWA Local 2336 members have been bargaining for a new contract for years. After several extensions, the contract expired on April 15, 2022. However, PIW continues to fail to meet the workers’ demands for a fair contract. The Global Organizing Symposium, a daylong side event of the AFL-CIO Convention, brought together workers and activists from around the world to share experiences focused on building collective power for workers post-pandemic and highlighted their role in fighting authoritarianism and bolstering democracy. “There are no human rights, no labor rights without democracy. And today, fewer than 20 percent of people live in truly free countries,” said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. Find out more at Solidarity Center. |